MAPUTO, 3 June 2008 (IRIN) – Time is one of the few commodities that duty manager Susana Diniz, 28, does not have much of as she attends to a stream of guests booking into the 158-room Holiday Inn hotel in Mozambique‘s capital, Maputo. 

“We have been fully booked for the last few weeks, thanks to the international guests attending some conferences taking place here,” Diniz told IRIN. She recently returned home after a seven-year stint in the hospitality industry in Brazil, where she obtained a hotel management degree.
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Maputo, Mozambique, 12 June – The number of beds available in Mozambique to receive tourists during the next Football World Cup, in South Africa, is expected to rise to 25,000, the National Director for Tourism Promotion, Hiuana Abacar said Wednesday in Maputo.

According to Mozambican news agency AIM, the tourist authorities initially estimated a rise from the current 18,000 beds to 20,000, but Abacar said that that number could rise to 25,000, as seme people will open up their houses to tourists.

Of the around 450,000 tourists expected to visit South Africa for the World Cup, around 50,000 are expected to travel to Mozambique.

In preparation for the World Cup, the government of Mozambique in partnership with the private sector has been investing in tourist and Sporting facilities, AIM reported noting the construction of the new national stadium and improvements at the stadiums of Machava and Costa do Sol.

The tourism sector, in its turn, has seen high levels of investment, which in 2007 totalled US$900 million as compared to US$600 million in 2006.

The Mozambican authorities have said that investments in the sector, which now accounts for over 1.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, not only increase capacity, but also provide a competitive advantage to Mozambique in regional terms.